A Gilbert and Sullivan Jaunt to Margaritaville

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From left, Amanda Raquel Martinez, Matt Kahler, Tina Muñoz Pandya, Dana Omar, Mario Aivazian and Danny Goodman of the Hypocrites rehearsing “The Pirates of Penzance.”CreditCreditWhitten Sabbatini for The New York Times

By Mark Caro

Nov. 27, 2017

CHICAGO — An exotic, discordant symphony was ringing out in The Hypocrites’ cavernous rehearsal space in the Ravenswood neighborhood on a crisp Tuesday night this month. Amid a backdrop of strummed guitars and ukuleles and plucked banjos, Emily Casey ran a bow across a musical saw to make wobbly tones fit for a ’50s horror movie while Tina Muñoz Pandya explored the buttons on an accordion.

For this freewheeling theater troupe that specializes in updated classics, bringing its popular production of “The Pirates of Penzance” to New York would require more than setting up the three plastic swimming pools and functioning tiki bar on a stage that will be shared with the audience.

Shawn Pfautsch, assuming the lead role of Frederic for the first time, took it upon himself to play the clarinet. “I picked it up a couple of months ago,” said Mr. Pfautsch, who had learned mandolin for previous productions. “I think I’ve finally gotten to a point where I feel slightly confident” — he laughed — “doing it in public.”

That Mr. Pfautsch and his fellow actors can make light of their future mistakes gives an indication of this 20-year-old company’s spirit, which will be on display when “Pirates of Penzance” runs from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 at N.Y.U. Skirball.

The Hypocrites’ artistic director, Sean Graney, whose high-pitched cackle frequently bounced off the converted factory’s brick and cinder block walls as his cast rehearsed words and chords, founded the company with the mission of making the old new again.

Mr. Graney not only adapted Sophocles’s seven tragedies into a play called “These Seven Sicknesses” but went on to shoehorn all 32 surviving Greek tragedies into the 12-hour 2014 show “All Our Tragic,” which collected six JeffAwards, celebrating local excellence in theater. Coming in April is his “Aristophanesathon,” which will explore 11 Aristophanes comedies over four and a half hours.

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Sean Graney, the artistic director of the Hypocrites, at the Chicago theater troupe’s rehearsal space.CreditWhitten Sabbatini for The New York Times

Such ambitions for a storefront theater come at a price. Last December, with the Hypocrites (and other local arts organizations) having struggled amid the distractions of the Cubs’ World Series run and the presidential election, the company canceled the remainder of its 2016-17 season. Mr. Graney said the subscription model wasn’t working for the organization, so advance ticket sales now fund the (fewer) productions.

Before the Hypocrites first dipped their toes into Gilbert & Sullivan, Mr. Graney said he felt constrained by musicals because, for the most part, “you really have to do [them] by the book.” His solution was to search the public domain, and there he found “The Pirates of Penzance,” the 1879 comic opera, which he’d never seen.

“When I read the libretto without even listening to the music, I was like, ‘This is brilliant,’ ” said Mr. Graney, 45, an animated sort with a shaved head, squinty-eyed smile and penchant for high fives when he likes what a performer has done. “It’s so smart, and it’s so funny, and it’s so critical of culture and society without being meanspirited. Then I listened to the music, and I was like, ‘Why haven’t I listened to this stuff before?’”

Inspired by the director John Doyle’s penchant for having actors accompany themselves instrumentally, Mr. Graney decided that his performers would pull similar double duty, even though many of those cast in that first 2010 “Pirates” production weren’t proficient on their instruments. (All agree that their musical chops have improved significantly.)

Then, as the first previews approached, the director radically altered the way audiences would experience the show: Instead of sitting in traditional seats, theatergoers would become part of the action. (Such immersive stagings have become increasingly popular.)

“Guess what? They’re actually just going to be with you onstage,” said Christine Stulik, who plays Mabel and Ruth in the current “Pirates,” a beach-party inspired production. “We all panicked, clearly, but then it was really freeing, a gift for an actor. We couldn’t plan for anything, and that takes this huge pressure off. Whatever happens happens, and the audience responds so well in ways that none of us expected.”

The 2010-11 winter production transformed the basement of Wicker Park’s Chopin Theater into a low-rent Margaritaville, and the show proved so popular that it returned the following year and again in various locations, sometimes in rotation with Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado” or “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

The fleet 80-minute “Pirates” also hit the road, presented at American Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville and the Olney Theater Center in Maryland. After its New York stop, the show will travel to Pasadena Playhouse in January and, with “H.M.S. Pinafore,” back to the Olney in July.

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Members of the Hypocrites in its popular production of “The Pirates of Penzance” at the American Repertory Theater.CreditEvgenia Eliseeva

Mr. Graney said New York is too expensive to do much for the Hypocrites’ bottom line, but “even if we break even, it’s really good to get money [to the performers], get people working.”

The November rehearsal had the group getting the show back on its feet for the first time in more than a year. Among other things this meant improvising new gags, like Matt Kahler’s Major General taking the potential sting off the “modern gunnery” line by aiming his guitar into the air, making ptew ptew noises and deadpanning, “Space lasers.”

Jay Wegman, the senior director of the Skirball, said he made “Pirates” part of his first season after hearing friends rave about it in Berkeley and at the A.R.T. “I just love stuff like this,’’ he said. “The more outrageous the better.”

Mr. Wegman anticipates room for 140 to 150 people onstage, with maybe 40 to 50 chairs for those who don’t want to stand among the performers or to perch on some piece of the set.

The Skirball engagement isn’t the Hypocrites’ first trip to New York. Mr. Graney’s one-act play “The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide” played at 59E59 Theaters in 2007 (“Imagine Harold Pinter as a 9-year-old,” Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York Times). And David Cromer’s acclaimed 2009 Off Broadway take on Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” began as a Hypocrites production, though it was remounted by New York producers.

The character of the city’s audiences is of great interest to this production’s 10 actors, who range from their 20s to 40s, five of whom were in the first Hypocrites “Pirates.”

Cast members said the audience in Boston, home to many Gilbert & Sullivan purists, tended to be more reserved than those in Louisville or at the Olney, while Mr. Pfautsch said the Berkeley attendees were, to his surprise, the least interactive.

“I don’t know what I anticipate New York being,” Mr. Graney said. “I’m excited to see. It could go either way.” And he whooped with laughter.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Matters Vegetable, Animal and Mineral. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe